Macworld has the tech tools you'll need when you're lost in the wild

Among the hi-tech survival devices Chuck La Tournous brought to display at MacWorld in the Moscone Center on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013, in San Francisco, perhaps none is more practical than the iPhone beer bottle opener. (Karl Mondon/Staff)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Chuck La Tournous was about two minutes into his presentation this week at Macworld 2013, "Tech vs. Wild," when a pimpled Boy Scoutish-looking kid in the audience shot up his hand.

"I go camping a lot," he said, "but they won't let us take our tech into the woods."

That sort of anti-geek outdoorsman mentality may soon be going the way of analog television. Here at the 29th annual Macworld, the message is that when the going gets tough, the tough get even techier.

"The idea is that tech can be useful in the great outdoors," said La Tournous, a 50-year-old blogger from western New Jersey and founder of TrailCamper. com. "As a kid, you maybe could have taken your Walkman on a campout, but today there's a lot of good reasons to take tech with you. It doesn't distract from the outdoors experience, it enhances it."

Among the hi-tech survival devices Chuck La Tournous brought to display at MacWorld in the Moscone Center on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013, in San Francisco, perhaps none is more practical than the iPhone beer bottle opener. (Karl Mondon/Staff)
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Karl Mondon
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La Tournous' talk, subtitled "Surviving Your Next Campout (and Other Natural Disasters) with High-Tech Gear," was just one of dozens of presentations at this year's Apple (AAPL)-centric fanfest at Moscone Center.

With a speakers lineup full of tantalizing titles like "The Studio in your Pocket," which explores movies created entirely by using an iPhone, and "Appalooza: Mobile Applications for the Musician," the expo promises to set any fanboy's heart aflutter. As Macworld's general manager Paul Kent put it, "while the real stars of this show are the products on the exhibition floor, we've got a whole range of speakers who are true leaders in their fields. And the workshops really offer something for everyone."

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We decided to take a hike with La Tournous, along with some of the survival products he's reviewed on his website. But instead of heading for the Pacific Crest Trail, we joined him on a walk through the urban wilderness just a few blocks from Moscone Center.

We left Macworld and headed toward Market and Sixth streets, where the drug-dealing, Dumpster-diving, panhandling denizens can make an out-of-towner feel like a babe in the woods.

While some of La Tournous' tech tools, like stargazing apps and waterproof smartphone cases, are clearly more suited for the wilderness, he said others would come in handy in an urban environment gone bad. That would include terrorist attacks, civil unrest, earthquakes or other natural disasters. He got to personally test this theory recently after Hurricane Sandy knocked out power in his hometown for more than a week.

Walking up Market, La Tournous pulled out one of the survival tools he's presenting at Macworld. It's a portable solar battery charger the size of a large napkin (Goal Zero, $80 plus a $30 rechargeable battery) that can charge your iPhone with just three to four hours of sunlight. If power goes out, as it did after Sandy, you can still keep your phone juiced up.

Chuck La Tournous demonstrates a pair of blue-tooth equipped hi-Fun Gloves that allow him to use the cellphone in his pocket and still keep his hands warm on Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013, outside the MacWorld convention in San Francisco's Moscone Center. La Tournous brought a variety of high-tech survival-type gadgets to display. (Karl Mondon/Staff)
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Karl Mondon
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And if cell coverage dies, as it did after the storm, La Tournous recommends SPOT Connect ($170, with yearly $99 subscription). If you're bumped off the grid, either in the woods or in a postdisaster urban environment, this small device sends a message via satellite to send in the cavalry.

Walking down Sixth, through a phalanx of the shifty-eyed and sinister, La Tournous showed off more tools for times when things go bad. There's the PowerPot from Practical Power ($149), a thermoelectric generator that transforms the heat of a fire into electricity for charging devices just by boiling a pot a water -- "All you need is fire," he said, "so this will get you power even if the sun's not out."

Then there's the water purifier that uses ultraviolet light (SteriPEN, $99) to clean a liter of drinking water in 48 seconds. "After Sandy, a lot of towns had boil advisories," Tournous said, "so this would have taken care of the problem of getting drinking water."

After showing off several seemingly indestructible smartphone cases, which would be nice to have if you're caught up in a riot and your phone goes flying, La Tournous pulled out the piÃ¨ce de résistance: The Opena iPhone Bottle Opener ($40), which in a way could be considered the ultimate survival tool.

Why? Incorporated into a sturdy protective smartphone cover is an opener to crack that bottle of beer you'll need after leaving the relative safety of Macworld to spend time on the mean streets of San Francisco.

Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689; follow him at Twitter.com/patmaymerc.

MacworldDescribed as the "the world's ultimate fan event for those who use, create and love Apple products," Macworld attracts Apple fans with all levels of skill and provides them their fill of speakers, workshops and hands-on demos of products and new mobile apps.Where: Moscone Center -- West Hall, San FranciscoWhen: Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.Ticket costs vary by package. For more details, go to macworldiworld.com/register.